As the value and use of information continues to increase, individuals and businesses seek additional ways to process and store information. One option available to users are information handling systems. An information handling system generally processes, compiles, stores, and/or communicates information or data for business, personal, or other purposes, thereby allowing users to take advantage of the value of the information. Because technology and information handling needs and requirements vary between different users or applications, information handling systems may also vary regarding what information is handled, how the information is handled, how much information is processed, stored, or communicated, and how quickly and efficiently the information may be processed, stored, or communicated. The variations in information handling systems allow for information handling systems to be general or configured for a specific user or specific use such as financial transaction processing, airline reservations, enterprise data storage, or global communications. In addition, information handling systems may include a variety of hardware and software components that may be configured to process, store, and communicate information and may include one or more computer systems, data storage systems, and networking systems, e.g., computer, personal computer workstation, portable computer, computer server, print server, network router, network hub, network switch, storage area network disk array, redundant array of independent disks (RAID) system and telecommunications switch.
Storage area network and host processor systems using redundant array of independent disks (RAID) have been effectively using Serial Attached SCSI (SAS) (SCSI is an abbreviation for “Small Computer System Interface”) for transfer of data and control information among the various disk drives and host processor (e.g., computer servers). SAS offers full duplex, dual-ported serial connections that support the most stringent of high-availability requirements. SAS uses point-to-point serial connections that may be easily scalable for high-speed shared bandwidth connections by integrating the multiple-ported serial connections on a very large scale integrated circuit (VLSI) device.
Typically, hot-sparing a hard disk drive (HDD) is accomplished with a SAS input-output controller (IOC) or a SAS RAID-on-chip (ROC) in a monolithic server. However, when an information handling system is comprised of a host processor(s) connected via SAS to just a bunch of disks (JBOD), SAS expanders with address zoning capabilities may be used to provide connectivity between the server(s) and the JBOD. The IOC or ROC on the host processor acts as a RAID engine that accesses the HDDs of the JBOD remotely through a zone allocated by the SAS expanders. Since the zone is fixed, the RAID engine cannot access any spare HDDs in the JBOD for hot-sparing.